The invention relates to a wire harness including a bent portion formed into a bent shape corresponding to a bent shape of a wire harness arrangement path on a vehicle body panel.
FIG. 6 illustrates a wire harness according to the related art. A wire harness 111 is arranged in a wire harness arrangement path set on a vehicle body panel 111 of a vehicle.
The vehicle body panel 111 of the illustrated example has an edge portion 112 having a substantially L shape. The edge portion 112 includes a burr or the like that may cause damage to wires when it is in contact with the wires in, e.g., a welding portion between the edge portion 112 and a metal plate.
The wire harness arrangement path is set in a substantially L shape on the vehicle body panel 111 around an outer side of the edge portion 112.
The wire harness 101 has a bent portion 102 formed around an outer side of a corner portion of the L-shaped edge portion 112. The wire harness 101 is held by clamp members 121 that fix at least both ends of the bent portion 102 to the vehicle body panel 111.
In the wire harness 101 according to the related art, insulated wires using a stranded conductor may be employed as a plurality of insulated wires constituting the wire harness. This is because the insulated wires using a stranded conductor have excellent flexibility compared to insulated wires using a single-wire conductor so that the wire harness can be easily bent in the wire shape corresponding to, e.g., a bent shape of the wire harness arrangement path.
Further, as illustrated in FIG. 6, in the wire harness 101 according to the related art, the bent portion 102 is covered with a protection member 131 in order to maintain the bent shape.
FIG. 7 illustrates a specific shape of the protection member 131. The protection member 131 disclosed in Patent Document 1 is a spiral tube wound on an outer periphery of a wire bundle 103 constituting the wire harness.
Both ends of the protection member 131 mounted on the bent portion 102 are fixed to the wire bundle by adhesive tapes 123 as shown in FIG. 6.
Further, there has been proposed a wire harness using a cylindrical protector as the protection member 131 (see, e.g., Patent Document 2).    Patent Document 1: JP-A-2001-239900    Patent Document 2: JP-A-7-143647
However, in the technologies disclosed in Patent Documents 1 and 2, the spiral tube or protector covering the wire bundle 103 caused a problem such as the large size and heavy weight of the wire harness.
Further, one having appropriate flexibility is employed as the wire bundle 103 in order to facilitate an operation of bending the wire harness to correspond to the bent shape of the wire harness arrangement path. Accordingly, if an installation distance between the clamp members 121 on which the wire harness is suspended is large, the wire bundle may be bent and interfere with the vehicle body panel due to vibration or the like when driving a vehicle, thereby causing a problem such as occurrence of unusual sound or damage.